Various types of surgery require a surgeon to place a cannula within a vessel, such as the aorta, in order to gain fluid access to the vessel. For example, in many cardiac surgeries, blood returning to the heart may be diverted to one or more cannulas for removal from the patient's body in order to pass the blood through a cardio pulmonary bypass (CPB) machine that reoxygenates the blood before returning the blood to the aorta on the output side of the heart. It is desirable to minimize the amount of time it takes to establish cannulation so that CPB may be established without undue delay and so that surgery times may be reduced in order to improve patient outcomes and reduce surgical team fatigue. Unfortunately, at odds with this desire is the reality that more and more surgeries are being done with minimally invasive techniques to reduce patient trauma and speed recovery times. The small access sites afforded surgeons with minimally invasive techniques may either make cannulation difficult (time consuming) or may prevent surgeons from using the minimally invasive techniques in the first place. Therefore, it would be desirable to have a cannulation device and methods which would enable surgeons to place a cannula efficiently in a vessel while operating through a minimally invasive surgical access site.